Strategic Environmental Impact Assessment Legislation And A Comparative Study

Strategic environmental impact assessment (SEIA) is the application of environmental impact assessment on levels of legislation, policy, plan and program. It is a formal, systematic and comprehensive assessment procedure against the environmental impacts of legislation, policy, plan and program. The final goal of SEIA is to prepare a written report on assessment conclusions, and incorporate the conclusions into government decision-making. SEIA can complement the defects of environmental impact assessment of construction projects, and help the government to achieve a more scientific and democratic policy-making, as well as the sustainable development of economy and society.The legislation of SEIA system dated from the 1960's "National Environmental Policy Act" in the United States. With the promotion of sustainable development concept, the increasingly serious environmental problems in various countries and the highlighted limitations of environmental impact assessment system of construction projects, many countries and regions have begun to value the SEIA system and incorporate it into the legal system. The SEIA was launched late in Mainland China, and is merely functioned on the level of plan, which has a considerable gap from the comprehensive SEIA. In an era when the scientific concept of development is implemented, it is very important to improve our country's SEIA system by learning from experience of other countries and regionsDue to diversity of political system and legal tradition, there are differences among SEIA legislations in the United States, Canada, the European Union and China's Taiwan region, which are mainly reflected in differences of several important elements in SEIA system, e.g. assessment objects, participant subjects, assessment procedure and the content of assessment report. By researching the causes of those differences and the implementation effects, it can provide some ideas and reference to legislation in our country.The purpose of a comparative study of SEIA is to provide ideas and reference for the legislation of SEIA system in China. The comparative analysis suggests that SEIA system in our country can be improved in the future in following areas: extending the scope of assessment objects from plan to legislation, policy, plan and program; enhancing the supervision role of the court and public as participant subjects in SEIA; making the environmental assessment procedure of legislation and policy, given their nature, more flexible than that of plan and program; introducing alternative scheme in the content of SEIA reports.